Melting Pages
Book Reviews and Recommendations
Do We Have To Review Every Book We Read?
This was originally a topic for Let’s Talk Bookish hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books back in November, and I never got around to actually writing up my blog post for that topic so here we are, talking about it 2 months later! Better late than never, am I right?
I don’t know if I put this expectation on myself or if it’s just a given when you become a book reviewer, but book reviewers should be reviewing every book they read, right? That was certainly what I thought when I started reviewing books two years ago, but it is most definitely not a rule for blogging and reviewing. I mean, the purpose of becoming a book blogger is mainly to review books to talk about your thoughts and share that with others, but it’s a little unrealistic to expect that for every single book you read.
While I definitely think it’s important to share with people what you liked and didn’t like about a book, sometimes you just don’t really have anything to say about a book! For example, I recently read Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, and while I wrote a quick few sentences for goodreads, I didn’t review the book fully because I don’t feel like it’s my place to review someone’s life experiences.
Another reason why I don’t think that you should review every book you read is because well, we don’t get paid for this. The majority of us review books because we love to read and love to talk about books, and it’s just a hobby for the most part! Sometimes you just don’t have the time to really sit down and gather all your thoughts to write a review on a book, or if you don’t really have anything to say one way or the other, having to take the time to sit down and type something up can be something you don’t really want to do.
There is also a big difference between writing up a sentence or two as some quick thoughts (like I did with Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered) versus a fully thought out, formatted book review for a blog post like I did with here with Witches of Ash and Ruin, for example. Writing out a full review takes a surprisingly long time, especially when you do any sort of special formatting!
Now obviously if you receive an ARC from a publisher in exchange for a review, you should certainly try your best to not only review the book, but get it read and reviewed in a timely manner. (This is still something that I’m working on, don’t judge me).
TL;DR – No book blogger is required to review every single book they read.
Melting Pages 
I do not give a full review to every book. I do give a rating or a DNF on all of them. The ones who really move me are the books that get written reviews.
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I always write reviews for ARCs or review copies but beyond that, I only write a couple sentences, like you did for SSDGM. I definitely don’t have time to write reviews for everything.
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Yeah, I like writing full reviews but sometimes I don’t have too much to say so I keep it short!
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I review almost every book I read, except for classics and books that I’ve chosen to DNF. Interesting post 🙂
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Thank you! I find that if I DNF a book, it may be for a reason someone else would like so I still try to write reviews for them, but not always. I’m finding that I don’t want to write reviews of nonfiction because I can’t really review facts or someone’s personal experiences.
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That makes sense, there are some non-fiction books I don’t review. It depends on what they are about and how they are written.
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Great discussion! I do feel obligated to review ARCs I receive. Otherwise, I don’t feel obligated to review every book I read….especially if I DNF it.
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That’s pretty much how I feel too, although I’m still struggling to actually read and review my ARCs before they are released!
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I rarely review books… I’ve had a few book blogs and they’ve always gone to pot because I’ve felt like I need to review all the books and I don’t want to – I’ll only review one if I really feel like I want to talk about it! As a blog reader I enjoy the other types of content like discussions like this more as well, because I find the blog posts more interesting and creative – saying that, I do also find a lot of my book recs through blog reviews haha.
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This is a great discussion post, and has given me a lot to think about!
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thank you!
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Pingback: Let’s Talk Bookish – Do bloggers/reviewers have to review every book they read? – Eternity Books
I definitely don’t review every book I read and I don’t want to do that either since I feel that it would take a lot of the fun away from reading and it would begin to feel like work instead of a hobby. This is an interesting post!
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So far e have reviewed all the books I have read this year. But I am in complete agreement that you should not have to review all of the books you have read. This has given me food for thought.
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I definitely do not review every book I read! I read so fast, and it takes me so long to write reviews, it wouldn’t be at all fun, and as you said, most of us are doing this for fun!
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That’s a good point! I don’t read too terribly fast, so I definitely have the time to write reviews but just sometimes it isn’t fun!
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